Johnson is
actually brainer than he lets on – his buffoonery is a carefully
cultivated act he has been honing since childhood, when he first realised that
it made people laugh and like him. Most men, when appearing on television for
example, will comb their hair – Johnson does the opposite, ruffling it to ensure
he retains his trademark image of disorganisation…. John Oliver captures this
well with
this short sequence.
And this extensive article from the LRB places Johnson firmly in the tradition of British satire.
Here’s a youtube
discussion Boris Johnson took part in a few years back (2016?) with an Oxbridge Professor on the merits of Greeks
and Romans - which gives a measure of that bit of the man… And this extensive article from the LRB places Johnson firmly in the tradition of British satire.
How did it happen?
Appointed to
his position by a curious system created by the Conservative party (some 20
years ago) but used rarely for the appointment of the country’s Prime Minister,
Johnson was the clear favourite from the
start – but attracted the support of a
bare majority of Conservative MPs. And was then subject (along with Foreign
Secretary Jeremy Hunt) to a fortnight of debate within the membership (of
160,000) Conservative party members.
From this he emerged last week with the support of 66% of Conservative party
members
– and was duly anointed by the Queen on Friday.
What did he then do?
Under the
(unwritten) UK constitution, this is enough to allow him to appoint a Cabinet –
which he duly did over the
weekend.
It’s been called the most right-wing
cabinet ever seen in the UK – and it is certainly one being readied for another
election in the autumn – only some 2 years after the last one called by his
predecessor Theresa May who had inherited a good majority but lost it in that
gamble.
And he has appointed as one of his key advisers Dominic Cummings - who
figured in the film I blogged about earlier in the year
But Johnson
and his government are highly vulnerable to any vote of confidence – a
bye-election this week could see the government’s theoretical majority reduced
to one! And it is clear that there is no majority in the current
Parliament for a no-deal Brexit…
As usual,
the Brexit blog gives the
pithiest summary
of the situation….And Richard North’s EUReferendum blog
gives us this assessment of the No-Deal option.
So now what? The Institute of Government Think Tank has just
published a briefing on the issues which confront him and his government. What is very clear is that Theresa May did her best to keep the UK within the ambit of the EU and that we now have a government which is determined to take the country out of Europe "lock, stock and barrel"!
A Pause for reflection
With my
usual serendipity, I had plucked a rather worn-looking book from the library
over the same weekend – Timothy Garten
Ash’s “Facts are Subversive-
political writing from a decade without a name” (2010) - one of whose
essays bears the title “Is Britain European?”, written in 2001) and is one of the best
things I have read on the subject, taking me back to the series of posts I did
on British (or English) identity I did earlier in the year……This is one of the last of about a
dozen posts
on the subject I did then……
Garten Ash’s
article has also got a great set of references – including the name of a
historian I hadn’t heard of Jeremy Black
who has just produced Britain and Europe – a
short history
(2019)
A lot of us
are looking to historians to help us make sense of this moment in the history
of a country about which a lot of us grew up being very ambivalent…
As a Scot
with a Scottish father and English mother - and educated in a state school - I
didn’t absorb much English history so come fairly fresh to the stuff flowing
from sophisticated English nationalist academics such as this first part of a series which is presumably being written to put Brexit in "proper" context. Jonathan Storey is a retired History Professor (from the Insead Business School in France) and runs a blog which offers thought-provoking views of the UK and Europe - in posts which are even longer than mine! .
Further references
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/06/24/the-empty-promise-of-boris-johnson - the most powerful expose I’ve seen
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/07/boris-johnson-profile/594379/ - another devastating psychological profile
Brexit: Behind Closed Doors, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvKGWQXi3rM
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/06/24/the-empty-promise-of-boris-johnson - the most powerful expose I’ve seen
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/07/boris-johnson-profile/594379/ - another devastating psychological profile
http://kyq4.blogspot.com/2019/07/from-attlee-to-boris-integrity-to-post.html
- my friend Keith’s great summary of the man the country has allowed to become
PM
Brexit: Behind Closed Doors, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvKGWQXi3rM
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